Don’t miss my friend Ian Buruma’s typically astute piece dissecting the British Left’s new litmus test of being anti-Israel. Good for the Guardian for printing it. Ian’s main point is debunking the notion that boycotting Israel today is morally equivalent to boycotting apartheid South Africa. Here’s the money paragraph:
A more apt comparison with Israeli policies would be India’s war in Kashmir. There, too, the victims are mostly Muslims. There is a long history of oppression, bad faith and stupid decisions. And the scale of the violence is much worse. Far more Muslims have been killed or tortured by the Indian army than by the Israeli defence forces. Dozens of Kashmiri victims – the number of people killed in Jenin – would not even reach the news. And if you think Kashmir is brutal, what about Chechnya? But India and Russia are not litmus tests. Moral outrage against their governments is not a badge of being progressive. No one is proposing a boycott of universities in Delhi or St Petersburg. I can think of one or two reasons for these double standards, but whatever they are, I believe that they tell us more about the boycotters than about the subjects of their rage.
Aw, come on, Ian. Stop being so polite. You know what these people really are.
The Dish 